19 Dec 2011

2011? Jesus, how did you arrive here - on your dinosaur? Click here to go to hencewise.com, and stop a weirdo holding a candle in the dark, looking all dramatic and old-fashioned.

“The female of the species is more deadly than the male” – Rudyard Kipling, 1911.

Men are useless now. Years ago, back in monkey times, women needed us for a few things; we had to kill animals, and gather vegetables and sticks and carry them home without losing ourselves or dropping them, especially during pregnancy; we had to use our superior physical strength to fight or kill other poor idiot blokes like us when food was scarce; and finally, importantly, our ugly, shoddily-evolved genitals contained exactly half of the key formula for making more of us (along with all the evolutionary imperatives of grabby-gropey hormones.) Not any more.

While women still contain the all-important wombs and mammary glands, of course, whatever men were bringing to the baby-making equation – which was only ever a teaspoon of slop, anyway – they’ve had stored and refrigerated in sperm banks en masse and worldwide for years. If I was a paranoid man – and if anyone ever tells you that I am, don’t trust them – I would look at paid sperm donation as the beginning marker of a global conspiracy to further shuffle men to the cliff-edges of a well-deserved extinction. The majority of smart women now already regard guys as oafish, dense sort of muscles on legs – shaved up-right gorillas that couldn’t open a jar and answer a question without somehow exploding a shed – and who can blame them? It’s a reputation we actively encourage as we bloke around the pub competing for girls’ attention like dim puppies, constantly and subconsciously ranking our cocks against each others through sports, cars, beer and lifting. We’ve only ever had about two useful purposes throughout history anyway: sperm and strength; just about everything else we did involved getting in the way and murdering each other. Now women have access to incredible, industrial machinery, guns, sex toys, votes, and all the spunk, men are basically redundant, and it won’t be long before women start to realise this, and hopefully wonder why in the name of name of God’s ovaries they are still putting up with so much of our shit.

Because men, almost exclusively through the use or threat of aggression, have oppressed and subjugated women on-and-off, but mostly on, throughout history, with rape and violence, then religion and politics, then war and wages, then cultural and emotional control, and then porn and Lynx adverts.

But that tide, however slowly, is retreating.

Imagine a future where all men suddenly vanished from the planet – women, you can pretend we all simultaneously burst in a shower of glitter and compassion, if you’d like – the human race would surely not only survive with only the slight, lubricated aid of pipettes, but it’s not a difficult feat to imagine it would absolutely flourish; perhaps towards some kind of glorious war-and-worry-free utopia, with free-range flowers and fair-trade orgasms everywhere, and a future fresh generation of good boys that actually magically respected the women who birthed them. Reverse the occasion, though, getting rid of all the ladies – and men, you can imagine some terminal frantic orgy, if that helps – and not only would the complete extinction of humanity be looming within a lifespan, but that time would be spent in a violent one-handed rampant haze of reckless masturbatory abandon, rendering every continent uninhabitable to complex life by breakfast.

This photo teaches us something about something, probably

Men in their current form, then, are doomed, but fortunately for us (men, of which I am one) we still have some time to resist our fate -- a lucky and much needed head-start to improve ourselves -- because some of the silliest women now are still not quite over keeping themselves down. Ignoring the constant incredible cycle of make-up, plucking, shaving, bleaching, scrubbing, dying, waxing, cutting, trimming, poking, pulling, pushing, nipping, tucking, wearing of self-inflicted high-heeled torture devices, and whatever-else-society-encourages women to do in order to appear 'younger' or ‘prettier’ for us gnarled lumps, the worst culprits, in my opinion, are still the women who insist on being treated like a woman. “Chivalry is dead,” moans Nora Mongingbottom, a woman who is in no way fictional, whenever a man doesn’t hold the door for her, or pull out her chair first, or hit someone who insults her fat ankles. Brave women jumped in front of horses for that kind of equality, and every time some pie-footed dolt like Nora insists on preferential treatment purely because of their gender, they’re ignorantly menstruating all over those achievements, and giving some men exactly the excuse they need to keep oppressing women.

It is almost exactly these kinds of women, too, that are often the ones expecting men to buy them drinks at the bar in exchange for their company, or the potential chance of some future fucking, and reinforcing, always, the idea that they are sex objects – slightly subtle prostitutes that need only be paid with a dozen vodka-cokes and a casual compliment. Indeed, the withholding of sex, at all, by less liberated women is perhaps part of this same sad power struggle, even though this party-pooping peskiness relies at some level on the puritan notion that women don't need or enjoy sex as much as men, which if you are a woman, or have ever had sex with one in the correct hole, is clearly wacky. All the orgasms and the bouncing and the cuddling and such, it’s equally good fun for everyone, but once again some oppressive or self-censoring force seem to make it more difficult for women to indulge in the same entertaining, common and condomy exploits as men without earning some evil, oppressive label (far too often from their own camp) like 'slag,' 'slut,' or 'cock-slappy vagina wind-flaps whore-trousers.'

Regardless, it is the strongest women who do not seek sex for emotional validation, or withhold it for the same reason.

Agreed.

Yet it’s hard to find these positive role-models for young women in the Media today, led as they are in Music by sellotape-dressed twats covered scalp-to-toe-ring in a four-inch armour of make-up, slutting around on rooftops in front of on-fire helicopters, singing about lip-gloss and systematically exposing as much nipple and vagina as is currently legal to televise to teenagers; and in Literature and Cinema by Bella, the cooking, cleaning, can’t-smile, coma-dump, kill-yourself psycho-bint heroine of Twilight, a franchise that grossed enough money to reconstruct a Caribbean island in orbit entirely out of jaffa cakes, but has done about as much for the empowerment of women as 2 Girls 1 Cup. Indeed, even the young free-market economist and social activist Beyoncé Knowles, also the main one in popular arse-wobble unit Destiny’s Child and Jay-Z’s 100th problem, once praised “all the mommas who profit dollas,” [Child, D., “Independent Women,” 2000] but then later conceded in a radical reversal of her post-feminist stance (while thrusting and spanking herself in a swimsuit and heels) that “if you like it then you should have put a ring on it” [Knowles, B., “Singles Ladies (Put a Ring On It),” 2008].

"All I want is to be respected as a human and an artist. (Please untangle me.)"

Either way, while it is clear that more control is, and should be, shifting back towards women, men have still obviously got a bit of time left to get their shit together, and develop at least some small reasons that women might want to keep us around if we want to have any part of a future rightfully belonging to peace-loving lesbians. I don’t know exactly how, but I’m guessing a good start would be to get over our runaway macho-macho bullshit, commit to the thinking of fairness, stop lying to get into girls’ pants, satisfy them when we do, give up words like ‘slut’ as nasty useless weapons, insist against our egoson sharing the bill and the drinks and the door-opening, stop calling women ‘crazy’ without the slightest acknowledgement that we may have helped, and learn that expressing a ‘girly’ emotion once in a while does in no way lessen our manly ability to punch to death a charging elephant.

SHE'S WATCHING YOU, MALE.

Then, and only then, may the future play out this common, heterosexual scenario:

A first date ends, and a ‘good’ first date it was too – there was some touching of the knee and elbow, not enough food because neither party wanted to be caught chewing, two bottles of whatever the fuck was 3 lines under the House wine (because nobody in their right mind knows anything about wine apart from what to order when they’re pretending they do), a bit of giggling and some eyebrows, one conversation about a mutually interesting topic like Paris or trombones, some lip-bitey business, then even a walk home that involved further cackling and some of those cheeky sentences with two possible meanings about "coming up" or "going down" or whatever. The increasingly convincing-looking pair eventually meander themselves intact all the way to the Man’s front door, and the Woman goes enthusiastically for The Kiss, maybe even a little penis, but the Man quickly pulls back. “I’ve had a lovely evening,” he says, “Good night.” He pecks her lightly on the cheek, and then jogs up the stairs, closing the door behind him. As the lady lingers on the step for a second, he leans back against the door and melts into a delirious dopey grin... before she finally turns away with a melancholy smile, hands deep in her pockets, the Man still on her mind, and walks away in to the long and lonesome night.

In conclusion, then, I'm not buying you a drink.

2011? Jesus, how did you arrive here - on your dinosaur? Click here to go to hencewise.com, and stop a weirdo holding a candle in the dark, looking all dramatic and old-fashioned.

8 Dec 2011

2011? Jesus, how did you arrive here - on your dinosaur? Click here to go to hencewise.com, and stop a weirdo holding a candle in the dark, looking all dramatic and old-fashioned.

People are a fascinating bunch of animals because the more of them you meet, the more you become convinced they’re all basically the same, give or take the odd genital or language, but the more you also become aware of how much they believe they’re not.

There seems to be no end to the clever systems they use to divide themselves, or limits to the creative ways that they can split their oven-rising humanity pie into smaller and slimmer slices. It’s easy to waggle disappointed fingers at religions, nationalities, cultures, and political beliefs, of course, but they’re just the crust of the overly pie-based metaphor, and not the real filling of how people pretend to be different to each other.

The common consensus, essentially, is that there are two kinds of people. I don’t mean men and women, obviously, who would all be the same anyway if you actually managed to keep them away from each other for long enough, and I definitely don’t mean children and adults, who are only different in height, hairiness and how much they’re pretending to like each other. No, the two kinds of human are normal people, who are easily identifiable as the people most like you, and weird people, who are, obviously, all completely silly.

It’s a simple system, and the nicest part about it is you can start dividing people up straight away without having to obtain any of that pesky information stuff, which the internet has proved there is far too much of to do anything useful with, except maybe invent the internet to hold it all.

A normal person in America, anyway, does not need to learn where Montenegro is to decide that they’re never going there, which direction a Muslim is praying if he's not blocking the drive, or what an anarchist’s political beliefs are as long as they are far enough away from the living room that they can’t stamp on the cat or steal all the nice bowls.

Weird people are easy to find because they believe, look like, and get up to all kinds of bonkers. Some of them dance around on one too many axis, some live in bizarre places that are definitely far too something to live in, others do peculiar and unnecessary sex stuff involving the bum, and some have strange hobbies that make as much sense as stapling your shopping list to the middle of your back and going to a disco with lots of tinned soup in your hat.

Weird people’s eccentricities can be as vast and varied as they are obviously outlandish, but the point is they’re not normal.

Freaks

Normal people, on the other hand, are even easier to find because they’re the people like you. Nice, normal, lovely you. You know how normal you are? Well, they’re like that too. They’re a much smaller group of people, admittedly, but they are a lot more obvious because they are nearer and, well, they’re not so bloody weird. In fact, the key trick to finding these normal people, if you ever lose them, is to listen out for which group of people is calling a different group of people ‘weird.’ Give them a bit of cheese, and you're in.

That’s the current system, anyway, and people seem to like it because it maximises the amount of time they can spend sitting down, inflating themselves with wine, and hating people they will never, ever meet unless they accidentally leave The Pub for thousands of miles in the opposite direction of their television. On a personal level, it’s simple, easy and familiar, and it takes all that looky-thinky-choosey nonsense out of decisions about who to like and dislike.

On an institutional level, it works well for democratic governments because once politicians have figured out which group has the most members, or which people are most like the other people and least like the people not like the other people, they know exactly who to promise a future lovely biscuit to whilst they pepper-spray everyone else in their actual faces.

I'm afraid it's the pepper-spray for you chaps

And it also works well for companies and advertisers too, because they can keep selling people stuff that keeps them normal, like all the other normal people, and that business is safe in the future because they can even change what 'normal' is once-a-year by adding an extra gigabyte of Angry Birds to your bra, or insisting that Vicious Slut Red is the New Denim, and Bland Old Monogamous Red is for frigid trolls in wicker sandals who still think it’s 1991.

In fact, it works at almost every level of society, from countries to classes, from regions to religions, and from friendships to families. As long as the little folks know who the normal people are, they know who they are working with, and who they are working against.

It’s perfect.

Well, almost perfect.

To be honest, it does still have one single teeny-tiny pesky Sarkozy-sized glitch that prevents the whole thing from running quite as smoothly as it could. While you might think it would be as simple as Shakira for people to split themselves into the two groups provided, the problem is that everybody thinks they are normal. The Hindus and the hipsters, the punks and the priests, the socialists and the scouts, the chavs and the Chinese, the goths and the gays, the Eskimos and the emos, the drivers and the druggies, even the fucking Australians.

Basically, because everyone decided to jump aboard the Good Ship Normal, it meant that all the people who weren’t like them, which ended up being most of them, were automatically left floating somewhere in the big wide Sea of Weird, but all those same ‘weird’ people thought they were normal too, and that the other ‘normal’ people were the weird ones.

Bloody humans, nothing’s ever simple is it?

Either way, what could have been a beautiful and efficient engine has struggled on for years, like Eddie Murphy’s integrity or a car full of crisps, spluttering occasionally with the same small, common and continual inefficiencies. Hatred, discrimination, lynching, wars, etc. You know, minor niggles.

That's rich coming from black-and-white people

There is a very simple upgrade available, though, and that’s incredibly lucky because clearly the human race can’t do anything more complicated than carry an egg without murdering the Jews.

Firstly, to ease the transition, we can stick with the ‘normal’ category if we want – that part of the plan was working out alright anyway until we all piled on it like Dan Brown at a shit sentence buffet – but we have to change the second word from weird to different. That’s all.

Weird to different.

The problem before was that everyone was certain they were normal, because they were surrounded by other people who were like them, and because nobody ever introduced ‘different’ as a comfortable alternative, that meant they thought everyone who wasn’t like them was weird, even though they were normal too, just in a different way. It forced people, especially their awful fucking leaders, to invent all these incredible groups that only ever existed in their minds, arranged on concepts as diverse as music tastes, wealth, colour, piercings, philosophy, politics, hairstyle, diet, outfits, traditions, magic beliefs, accents, absorbency, puddingness, pigeonability, whatever. We forgot quickly that we were one thing, except in a few different shapes and colours.

And it meant a lot of problems because there was no room for anything that wasn’t normal, but that was equally true for both sides, so conflicts were as inevitable as the intestinal collapse you’d suffer if you had to drink a pint of liquid éclair every time Alan Sugar was unnecessarily pleased with himself.

Every day, everywhere, everyone gets up in the morning with roughly all of the same objectives- food, safety, shelter, love, health, happiness, avoiding wasps and Mormons – yet somehow manage to get in each other’s way at almost every available opportunity like too many pricks in too small a pickle jar. Humans cause each other almost constant unnecessary trouble and suffering for the simple reason that they don’t understand each other, and they don’t try to.

Hand, wall, stranger, BANG, world peace

The new system will gradually put an end to all that, and it’s incredibly easy to introduce. It’s slow but it’s simple. It just involves one person at a time realising that the word ‘weird’ has always meant ‘different,’ and that ‘weird’ only ever existed because we were so convinced that we were normal. We created all the sides and teams and classes ever, like a silly, magic spider conjuring more legs so it could kick itself in extra ways, and that is why it shouldn’t sound like naive idealism to say that we can get rid of them all again, if we want, with just a simple and consistent shift in our thinking; with one big, little realisation.

Nobody is weird and nobody is normal.

We are all just different.

Now can someone please tell that attention-twat Lady Gaga before she tries to wear a town as a hat, and breaks her neck penis-humping a prop made of tits and madness.

2011? Jesus, how did you arrive here - on your dinosaur? Click here to go to hencewise.com, and stop a weirdo holding a candle in the dark, looking all dramatic and old-fashioned.